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A tale of two restaurants

Beej Jasani

Vikram Vij and Pradeep Shastri have many things in common. Both gave up safe jobs in hotels and followed their dreams to start on their own. Vij's in Vancouver, Canada, and Pradeep's in Santa Monica, California. Both are unusual Indian restaurants, drawing crowds every night.

At Vij's, you are offered complimentary chai and puris, as a welcoming gesture. At Pradeep's, food is cooked in just a "smidgen of oil", no heavy fat (including ghee) is used. And to balance the meal, a salad of organic greens is included on all the plates.

As chef-cum-owners, both men chose a field radically different from their family backgrounds.

Shastri's father, head of the Sanskrit department at Delhi University, was worried when Shastri decided to turn to hotel management while doing his master's in mathematics. He eventually specialised in French and Italian cooking.

Vij's father, who was in the clothing business, could not understand his son's passion for cooking either. "Instead of playing cricket with the boys, I used to hang out in the kitchen with my mother," recalls Vij, laughing.

Growing up in Bombay, Vij went on to study hotel and restaurant management in Salzburg, Austria. Armed with his degree, he went straight to Canada where he worked at the famous Banff Springs hotel in the resort town of Banff, Alberta. Following that, he moved to Vancouver and opened shop.

"As an ambassador of India, I felt that our cuisine was never properly represented in North America," Vij says. "I wanted to show people that Indian cooking is simple, flavourful and very pleasing to the eye. I make sure that the presentation is good," he adds.

Both, Vij and Shastri push the parameters of Indian cooking.

At Vij's, dishes are very creative and seasonal. 'Red snapper and scallops in garam masala, cilantro and garlic chives on puffed pastry,' is one such example. Vegetarian dishes can include 'paneer and couscous cakes with pomegranate sauce and greens in the middle'.

The menu at Pradeep's offers equally novel 'tandoori salmon on a bed of turmeric and cilantro-flavored mashed potatoes, with organic salad'. Bharta-based dishes are the specialty here, with the baingan bharta infused with a choice of chicken, lamb, shrimp or salmon.

Shastri, who went to a hotel management school in Delhi, worked with the Taj Group of Hotels for a few years. He became assistant chef at the Casa Medici, the rooftop Italian restaurant of the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi. At Casa Medici, he has cooked several times for the prime minister's house, when Sonia and the late Rajiv Gandhi ordered Italian cuisine. He has also worked on Carnival Cruise Lines. The travelling has given him a good sense of the connection between cultures and cuisines.

Since these restaurants do not serve standard Indian fare, the older-generation Indians, especially, do not frequent them. But business is still brisk at both places, with a lot of white clientele, and many repeat customers.

The décor is far from standard too. Vij describes Vij's as "a minimalist and modern Indian restaurant". An ornate darwaaza from a temple in Mysore is its most prominent Indian feature. And in Pradeep's, Sanskrit shlokas boldly run across the walls.

In both cases, the spouses help tremendously in running the restaurant.

Vij's wife is responsible for the menu and creating the dishes. "Maybe the saying is true, that behind every successful man there is a woman," exclaims Vikram Vij.

And Shastri's wife, who worked at the front desk for the Beverly Hills Hotel, manages the front of Pradeep's, ensuring smooth delivery of food and service.

"Food is something that relays your love and the passion with which you have cooked. It is very easily detectable. You can measure hospitality with that... though it has no dimensions, you can measure it," says Shastri, sitting across my table, the last customer, gone.

And though it is eleven o'clock at night and it has been a long day, there is a sparkle in his eyes.

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